Reflectiverse Saga - Chapter 2

School had never been easy. Everyone knew who his father was and for that he was an object of ridicule. He had very few friends and even the teachers tended to ignore him as much as they could afford to. To young Ananuk this did not matter however. He had long decided that he was going to follow in his father’s footsteps, and the ridicule he faced at school was only the beginning of what he would have to deal with later on in life. But somewhere between his undergraduate term and his postgraduate session he moved away from field work to theoretical research. His father’s reputation (or lack of it) made for him being bumped from department to department till he had to collaborate with a young scientist from Yaktuki- Rabik.

This morning, last night’s discussion with Faolvay and the Yaktukan scientists was playing on his mind, and he admitted to Rabik- “I do not know what to make of this.”

“What’s there to make, Ananuk? Agreed that the technology is weird and abnormal, but it works, and that is all we need.”

“How do you know it works when you haven’t tested it yet, Rabik?”

“Because it is Yaktukan, my friend; the theoretical testing it has been subjected to by the best of us is more than adequate to ensure its validity.”

Ananuk chuckled in spite of himself, “you Yaktukans are notoriously haughty, Rabik; do you know that?”

“Yes I do;” Rabik replied with a mischievous grin on his face, “but you Kadorrans are notoriously holy, and do YOU know that?”

Ananuk snickered knowingly, and nodded. “But on a serious note, Rabik, I want you to explain it to me again, without the Yaktukan terminology.”

“I will try, Ananuk. For your ease, picture the targetspheres game. Your point is fixed on the surface, and you cannot move your striker. But you can direct the targetsphere to any of the seven holes. Picture the targetsphere as the chunk of matter we would want to move, and the seven holes as seven colonize-able planets. The surface borders are analogous to the plane of the reflective universe.”

Ananuk’s mind wandered back to the first time he met Rabik. They were both a lot younger then. Ananuk a frustrated but talented scientist and Rabik a promising and optimistic one. They were assigned to a marine project where the tasks of both were limited mostly to sample collection. But it gave them ample opportunities to debate and test each other. The long nights during the project found the two in each other’s company, smoking viso-karas and discussing science. Each found intellectual satisfaction in the other. When Rabik went back, he made sure that the Yaktukans commended Ananuk and placed him on the global scientific map. After that his superiors could not afford to ignore him anymore and it was that initial push that then propelled Ananuk towards the journey that ended at the leadership of the KSA.

Ananuk nodded, “an apt analogy, my friend; I begin to see the picture now. In targetspheres we shoot the sphere at the required angles according to the hole we target. Similarly, to direct a chunk of matter across space to a particular point, we must shoot it at the reflective universe at the necessitated angle.”

Rabik nodded encouragingly, “you see the picture now. Our discovery of this ‘Reflectiverse’, so to speak, combined with the technology we have devised to direct matter onto its plane, is the key to inter-stellar travel.”

But Ananuk shook his head in the negative, “while I admit this is a groundbreaking discovery, Rabik, there are many questions that need to be addressed first.”

“Like?”

“Like what will be the side-effects of such matter field disturbances? What will be the time lapse involved? How will we get the matter to return? This is an entirely new field of science, Rabik. No scientist is going to accept it without rigorous testing.”

“All questions can be answered with time, my friend. The side-effects of this we can only study once the process begins full scale. To return the matter we must of course build a Reflecting Conductor on the other side of the journey as well, and I allow that we will need much planning and work on this aspect. As for the time lapse, there will be none.”

“How does that work?”

“Because in theory, the matter will not be traveling any distance at all. Take the analogy of the targetsphere again. There is a time difference between the moment you strike the sphere and the moment it enters the hole because there is some distance between the sphere and surface borders, as well as the hole and the surface borders. But in this case, there is NO distance between the Reflectiverse and our own universe, simply because the former does not lie with the space of the latter. So the matter will hit the Reflectiverse at the exact moment of activation and re-appear on the target planet at precisely the same moment it disappears from the point of origin.”

Ananuk sighed heavily, “Rabik, it is hard for me to accept all this without a single test run or at least some form of empirical backing.”

“It is backed by Yaktukan theory, Ananuk; and this is enough for us. But remember that we do not intend to use this discovery for ourselves, as per the Trithan Command. There is no need for Yaktukans to spread to the stars, it is enough that humans in general do.”

The Trithan Command was a code of ethics and behavior that was laid down by Yaktuki Tritha, the founder of Yaktuki. While the Yaktukans vehemently denied such claims, the Command was taken on the rest of Thea as a radical and forbidding religion. The Command encouraged minimalism as a way of life, and ordered its followers to use only that which they need. As result, while Yaktuki was at the forefront of scientific research and development, it lagged behind other regions in putting the knowledge to practical and progressive applications.

“Yes, I know,” accepted Ananuk. “Under the Command you have no use for this technology even if it proves to be wildly successful. So you want us to test this thing and use it?”

“When it comes to that, yes, but we want you to take this to the Emperor.”

“Why can’t you do that yourself?”

“Because the Emperor’s ways are objectionable to Yaktuki, and we want nothing to do with him. Neither do you for that matter, but you do nothing about it.”

This taunt brought the two to a major bone of contention between them, and Ananuk scoffed, “and what do you do, Rabik? You share your farm produce and your scientific advances with his other regions, you let his fleets patrol your skies and man your borders, you even pay him a tax out of the very resources he allocates to you, just like all other regions do! Or do you think that in not going to him yourself you are committing great rebellion?”

“There is a fundamental difference between what you do and what we do, friend Ananuk. You serve the Emperor to protect yourselves, to ensure that the fleets that guard your borders do not attack your cities in turn. You serve him so you do not have to waste resources on military expenditures, and use them for the welfare of your people. We, on the other hand, serve the Emperor plainly because it falls under the codes of the Command. We are not to build armies and maintain fleets, even though we do have the resources to do so; we are to share our produce so that our human brethren in the other regions are not starved; and we do not keep our sciences to ourselves because human interests come first. We may be against the Emperor, Ananuk, but we are not against Theans.”

The Empire had existed for as long as history could remember. The first names that historians could dig out of Thea’s long and rich past were of the Tritha brothers- Yaktuki and Vaktuki. In time it was uncovered that even the brothers had submitted to an Emperor. The Yaksargik Dynasty was thus the ruler of Thea since ‘the beginning’, and while no one questioned that the Dynasty had begun the Empire, many challenged its right to hold the throne. The past dozen or so generations of the Empire had been tested by numerous rebellions, and at one point the throne had been occupied by ‘the Cleaner.’ The first rebellion had been by Kadorra itself, when its people had tired of the Emperor’s greed and increasing taxes. Not all rebellions were fuelled by righteous zeal however. Vaktuki’s first rebellion, indeed all of Vaktuki’s rebellions, was charged by the lust for the throne of Thea. It was ironical when one considered the fact that Vaktuki, under its founder Vaktuki Tritha, was the first region to have accepted the reign of the Empire.

At different courses of time, different regions rebelled for different reasons. Sometimes the rebels weren’t from any region but were just united under the common cause of taking down the Empire. Thinkers like the Ahurunian- Kaferr, and the Yaktukan- Yakut, had espoused a different system of governance, where they wanted the people to decide who was to rule them. With the populations of Thea and its regions growing exponentially every decade or so, their system had soon been ruled out as unfeasible. Then came the military rebellions, which were the most powerful the Empire ever had to face. Large sections of the Imperial military had decided that they could do a much better job of ruling Thea than the Emperor, and did not his power lie in his military? But generations of rule by a single Dynasty had forged loyalties that were hard to break, and the military had to face dissent and insubordination within its own ranks whenever it got too close to controlling the throne.

Ananuk was growing weary of the argument. “But if I take this to the Emperor, Rabik, I want an understanding with you.”

“There is always an understanding between us, Ananuk.”

“I mean a specific understanding.”

“Name it.”

“That Kadorra and Yaktuki are on the same side, Rabik. I cannot speak for the other regions, but we are as weary of the Emperor as you are. If the Trithan Command is a valid reason for you to not retaliate, then concern for our homes and lives is valid enough for us. I want to know that you, and all of Yaktuki, understand this.”

“I do, my friend, coming as this is from you; and perhaps all of Yaktuki could too. But what I don’t understand is that why is this so important?”

“Think about it Rabik, if this discovery is as potent as you promise it is, then the world is about to change. Do you think the Emperor will be able to keep a hold on all the planets we might colonize? His control is going to spread thin, and your twin region Vaktuki will be quick to take advantage. I don’t want us to get confused between ally and enemy in those times.”

Rabik smiled; a faint twinkle in his eyes. “You need not have worried, my friend. Our regional misconceptions about each other notwithstanding; it is Kadorra that Yaktuki has called on first, and it is Kadorra that Yaktuki asks of for assistance.”

“Then I will go to the Emperor.”